Design Discourse - Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing, 2010a

Dubinsky
sional writing, unlike many of its peers (e.g., Purdue or North Carolina State).
Our department had 101 personnel, but only one with a PhD in Rhetoric and
Composition or Professional Communication. The department’s emphasis was
literature, although there were a number of prominent creative writers on the
faculty as well. English majors could add a Professional Writing Cluster, but this
“cluster” was hollow, consisting of the two service courses (English 3774—Business
Writing and English 3764—Technical Writing) and a course in Advanced
Composition, which had no defined, consistent content. Equally important to
note is a fact that I learned during my interview process that the reputation of
these service courses in other colleges, particularly in the College of Business,
had been diminishing. 1 There were no graduate courses in professional or technical
writing and only one in composition—the required course in pedagogy
for the graduate assistants, taught by Dr. Paul Heilker, who then directed the
program in Composition.
Despite what I’ve just outlined, my position was highly vulnerable.
During my interview with the dean, I learned that I was “an experiment”—the
department’s first tenure-track faculty with an advanced degree in Rhetoric and
Professional Communication. For the first three years, the dean’s office would
pay sixty percent of my salary, and the dean told me quite directly that my contract
renewal would depend on my success in reviving the credibility of the two
“service” courses (Business and Technical Writing), expanding our emphasis in
outreach, integrating technology into the curricula more effectively, and creating
a program in Professional Writing, one that could be extended into a graduate
program. 2 Despite the administrative duties involved, I would teach a full load
and would be expected to conduct and publish research. The challenge, needless
to say, was daunting.
Ten years later our department has ninety personnel—fewer overall,
but a higher percentage of permanent faculty and virtually no adjunct or temporary
faculty. More to the point, now eleven of the ninety (or twelve percent
of total and over twenty-five percent of tenure track) have PhDs in Rhetoric,
Composition, and/or Professional Communication. Several of these eleven are
senior hires who have significant administrative roles in and out of the department
(e.g., Carolyn Rude is our department chair; Diana George directs our
Composition program and Writing Center; Kelly Belanger directs our Center
for the Study of Rhetoric in Society; and Shelli Fowler directs a major university
initiative for graduate education). Our Professional Writing Program not only
exists, but it is one of the three options for English majors. We counted, as of last
spring (2008), just over two hundred majors and minors, and our curriculum
consists of nine courses at the undergraduate (3000-4000) level in addition to
the two, previously mentioned, service courses. Equally significant is the fact
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